I lasciviously awaited the arrival of the cartridge in our house. I recall saying to my Mom, ” I can use it to practice for getting the 99,990 points high score. AND think of all of the quarters I will save!”

It had been so long that I had to dig the disk out, but my favorite was Repton. I don’t remember it terribly well, just that it was fun enough that even though I never lasted all that long, I kept trying over and over and over.

Here’s a page on it with a GIF animation showing the demo/instructions:http://www.jeffbots.com/c64/repton.html
(I had it for the Apple II, but aside from the usual color differences they seem to be the same.)

That’s a good question. I’d probably have to go with Spriggan 1 or Soldier Blade for the PC-Engine. R-type was up there as well. Loved it on both the Turbografx-16 and the Sega Master System (as well as the arcade).

What’s your favorite 2D space shooter of all time? Space Raiders for the Atari 400/800 published 1979. It was the reason I bought an Atari 400 in 1980. Not sure it qualifies since it was more 3D then 2D. This 360 degree first person shooter [You could be attacked from the rear.] had elements from Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica. In 2007, it was included in a list of the 10 most important video games of all time.